The Young Turks - Ron Goes Rogue

Episode Date: May 16, 2023

DeSantis signs laws to ease 2024 run. Measures would let him campaign while serving as Florida governor and shield travel records from the public. A Florida teacher is under investigation by the state Department of Education after what she believes is a targeted attack by a school board member who took issue with a Disney movie shown in her classroom. L.A. County homeless services workers can't afford housing themselves, study finds. HOSTS: Cenk Uygur (@CenkUygur), Ana Kasparian (@AnaKasparian) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ https://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ https://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕 Merch: https://shoptyt.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Woo! It's up! One of the inter-exam. Thank you, Gannick Sparing with you guys.

A bit of an excellent show ahead for you guys. So we've got international elections, we've got drums, we've got DeSantis trying to rig elections in this country. We got so many things for you, unfortunately, political violence as well, yes. Buckle up for the DeSantis story because he mucks up a potential positive commentary that we would provide, with the exception of him basically deciding to get super authoritarian in Florida for his own purposes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because he, he's just mucked up a really good strategy. Yeah, why'd you have to do it? Well, because he's DeSantis and he's a Republican and all

that stuff. But you know, look, we are going to give DeSantis some credit on this show today. You know why? Because we're the fairest show in America. Okay, and then discredit. Also because we're the fairest show in America. Totally. All right, forward. All right, well, we begin with a pretty terrifying story. It's still developing as we speak, but we'll give you the details as we know them at this moment. This morning, two staffers for Representative Jerry Connolly, a Democrat, were attacked at his district office in Virginia. So we don't know too much about the story. It's currently developing. But what we do know so far is that an individual entered the office at 11 a.m. this morning. The individual has been identified as Schwann Kha Tranfam. And he is now in

custody and faces charges of aggravated malicious wounding and malicious wounding. So two charges of malicious wounding for obvious reasons. There were two staffers who were attacked by this individual. So he shows up to the office, asks specifically for the congressman. The congressman was not there at the time. It's unclear exactly what transpired after this individual had asked for Connolly. But at some point afterward, he attacked Connolly's senior aide and also an intern who was on the job for the first day. Now, both were brought to the hospital with luckily non-life-threatening injuries.

And I'm going to stop for comment because, Jank, I mean, we're seeing an uptick. We've been seeing an uptick in political violence. We don't know what the motive is yet in this case. What are your thoughts initially? Yeah, look, obviously the thing I'm most concerned about it is political violence. He came in with a metal bat. The reason that you have two similar sounding charges is one guy malicious wrongdoing. The other one is aggravated because he hit him in the head with the bat.

And so potentially serious damage there to those individuals. And the sorry state of our country, I was relieved that it was a bat and not a gun because God knows how many people he could have killed there. So we keep having political violence over and over again and, you know, look, the right wing doesn't want you to say reality, which is that it's about 89 to one in one direction. The one was that one guy who did the shooting at the Republican softball event. Other than that, it's almost all right wingers that are engaging in political violence. In this case, is a Democrat that's attacked. Now, we don't know why this guy did it. And it is very likely political, but we don't know. You know, is he right winger, deep right wing or not at all right winger, just a guy who's, you know, has mental health issues, et cetera. We don't know that yet. But look, one side keeps, and this is happening, by the way, with right wing governments all throughout the world. One side is willing to do violence and the other side is not willing to do violence. And unfortunately, it gives the side willing to do violence some advantage because it scares the other side.

And it makes them concern about getting into politics. It makes them concerned about working in politics, et cetera. And that's kind of the point to terrorize. And so we don't know if this guy's connected to larger events, but obviously a terrible development here in Virginia. Yeah. So look, so far from what I'm seeing, there hasn't been any indication that this is motivated by right wing ideology.

It seems like he's got some issues. And what do I mean by that? Well, apparently he has claimed that he was imprisoned in a lower perspective based on physics and tortured from the fourth dimension. Yeah, obviously, massive mental health issues, right? But the reason why I mention the political ideologies, et cetera, is because usually even in those scenarios, it needs a trigger, right? So, and that's why we often use this word that is, if you're not familiar with it, sounds

kind of fancy is a super weird way of saying, but stochastic terrorism, right? And what that means is stochastic just means random, right? And but it's folks who say, hey, you got to go do something about this particular problem. And they know that there are a certain number of people that it will trigger, the people who are the most mentally unwell with a proclivity towards violence. You need that too, because most people who are not mentally healthy don't, have a proclivity towards violence. And so they trigger folks knowing this stuff's like this could happen.

Again, in this case though, we have no idea that he was triggered by right-wing media or right-wing ideology, et cetera. But he did attack a Democratic office and a political office, and that's why we're concerned. So he specifically wrote that the CIA has been guilty of wrongfully imprisoning me in a lower perspective based on physics called The Book World since 1975. Following that, they are guilty of brutally torturing me with a denigrating disability consistently since 1988 till the present from the fourth dimension. I am entitled to be cured and restored to normal condition by a digital technology

and compensated for my extreme suffering and losses to the amount of $29 million. Not well. Yeah, he's just not well. So this is what we're dealing with in the country. Like, let's just be clear about that. We have mentally ill people who are not getting the treatment that they need all over the place. They carry out violence, whether it's toward U.S. lawmakers, they carry out violence, whether it's in the case of you're on public transportation, doesn't matter, we see it all over the place.

We see it in mass shootings, we see it in this case, and it's just another example of this country failing the American people, and we pay the price for that. All of us pay the freaking price for that. Well, yeah, I mean, look, that gets into it. issue of when someone's this deeply mentally unwell, do you just hope that they voluntarily check themselves into a facility or their family and friends that could help them guide them to a situation where it's not as voluntary? Because, I mean, again, thank God this is the one guy in America that couldn't find a gun because there could have been tons of dead people, let alone the swinging about it at a guy's head, et cetera, in this case. And guys, even the left winger

who did the shooting at the softball field for Republicans. You think he's mentally well? No, anyone who decides, hey, I'm going to go into an office and start shooting people, isn't a range of folks who are not doing well mentally, right? But the answer to that isn't, like if we were like the right wing, we wouldn't, we'd say, oh, you just need better doors at a softball field. No, no, you, most of the time you need gun control, this one's not about guns. And I am worried about it, him directing it at a political office, but he might as well, he might as well, he might have done it to a Republican office holder too, given how deeply unwell he is. He's not making any sense at all.

He's not making any sense at all. But, you know, in terms of the violence that we're experiencing in this country, political or otherwise, the gun violence in particular, you know, this weird partisan divide where one party is like, no, no, no, it's 100% the guns, but that's what we got to focus on. And then of course, the right. right wing pretends to care about and want to do something about untreated mental illness in the country. Obviously, whenever they have an opportunity to vote on appropriating the necessary resources to address the issue, they always vote against it. But the point I want to make is it's both. It's both. Both happen to be a huge problem that need to be addressed. And neither one of them are being addressed. And my point is that it's the intersection of those two things. That's the massive problem that we have now. Every country has. has people within the, again, the range of people who are not mentally, well, there's a small

sliver of people who are prone towards violence. By the way, people who are in the community that, you know, wants to protect people who are not doing well mentally, they say, well, hey, don't associate it with mental health. But guys, it doesn't mean the majority people have that problem. But if you're ignoring the minority that are prone to violence, you're ignoring reality, right? We have to be realistic so that we can get to the problem. But every country has that. Every single country. We're about the only country that says to almost all those folks, here, have a weapon, do whatever you like with it. Okay. So in this case, thank God in it, even though again, he swung a bat and hit a guy's head. America's in such deep trouble that

we're like, oh, thank God it wasn't a gun because then tons of people would have died. And that's the silver lining in this horrific story. And that's the sorry state that America's in, unfortunately. All right, well, why don't we move on to what Ron DeSantis is up to? Because he actually did manage to one-up Trump over the weekend. It's the name on the East Coast, and all eyes are on Governor Ron DeSantis. As he weighs a potential presidential run, the Florida Republican held a number of events in Iowa over the weekend, while former President Donald Trump had to cancel his Riley there due to a tornado threat. While in Iowa, DeSantis had a warning for Republicans saying, quote, we must reject the culture of losing that has impacted our party in recent years. The time for excuses is over.

If we get distracted, if we focus on the election of the pass or on other side issues, then I think the Democrats are going to beat us again. Ron DeSantis calling out the culture of losing, gee, I wonder who he was talking about. Now that jab that he threw toward Donald Trump happened over the weekend while Desantis was visiting Iowa, a state where Donald Trump was supposed to hold a rally over the weekend, but he canceled that rally citing tornado warnings. DeSantis felt like maybe it's a good opportunity for me to show up and connect with some of the voters there, and that's exactly what happened. Now, we've got some more details on that reporting, let's watch.

The Florida governor did go have several events, including one in Sioux Center, Iowa on the west side, and also one in Des Moines, Iowa. It was an impromptu one hastily put together. But what it did show was he was trying his, he was engaging in retail politics, politicking, something that you don't often, that you've heard some recent criticism about about him not being able to do that and something that's key on the campaign trail. And you saw the Florida governor doing that. You also saw him attempting to contrast him, as you mentioned, his, him and his potential candidacy with that of Donald Trump. And you saw that with even having, you know, those comments that he made and even showing up at the Des Moines event on the same day, same night that former President Trump

canceled. Now, that strategy, I have to admit, is pretty savvy. And I'm sure that got under Trump's skin. But remember, Ron DeSantis hasn't announced his candidacy for president yet. And he's already campaigning. And it turns out that he has signed a bunch of legislation in Florida that loosens election related laws that would allow for him to do certain things that previous governors would not have the ability to do. I'm going to give you the details in just a moment. But Jank, I'm curious what you think about DeSantis's strategy here. Yeah, now we have bad news about DeSantis as well, trust me. But here I gotta give him a bunch of wins. We're honest here and I don't like

DeSantis but you give credit where credit is due. So number one, showing up when Trump was too scared to show up, excellent. Okay, number two, the culture of losing is a great strategy, emphasizing that, that's exactly right. So that's Trump's Achilles Hill. Yes, I was just about to say that, that exact wording too. Right. And it's, and I'll tell you two interesting things. First, look, guys, if you go after Trump in the Republican primary as a guy who's hateful, you're nuts. That is not going to work. That's the feature, not the bug, okay? So you want to do that in a general election, that's a different story. Also not that effective, but in a Republican primary, that would be the world's worst strategy,

right? If you want to go after him for being incompetent, okay, getting better, getting better, okay? But the main thing is, look guys, whether you love him or not, because keep it real, the great majority of Republican voters love him. He's not gonna win, so it's your call, okay? This is an old Democratic trick, but in this case, it's true, right? Or at least it's hopefully, potentially true, more likely to be true. Because the Democrats will go like, oh, Bernie Sanders is polling 12 points better than Hillary Clinton,

but he can't win. And they'll just do propaganda, wall to wall to wall. Everybody in media will say it. And it scares a hell out of Democratic voters and they will vote for Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden, right? And the Republican side, it doesn't work quite as well. But it is his only hope in it, because they don't want to lose it. either and basically what DeSantis is going to say is if you don't like woke culture and you want to own the libs, you're not going to own the libs by losing and all this guy ever

does is lose and so that there's a lot of truth to that. In fact, he should bring in the six bankruptcies, he should bring in all of his failures throughout his life and that he's a spoiled little kid that got everything from his daddy and screwed it all up like he always does, right? So now DeSantis is on to a good and smart strategy. And the third win is, he's in Iowa, guys. I was worried he wasn't going to run at all because Trump has been kicking the living crap out of him rhetorically within the Republican base and has gained great ground.

So the fact that he's in Iowa and very likely to run, to me is a huge relief. At least we're going to have a Republican primary. I think focusing on election related losses is a smart strategy. I think focusing on Trump's bankruptcies is not a smart strategy. Because you got to remember when they see, meaning Trump's base, when they see Trump's financial failure, in a lot of ways they see themselves, right? Not necessarily in the context of being handed $400 million from Papa and then proceeding to go bankrupt several times. But remember, they might not be privy to those details. They might not even care about those details.

What they don't like is being demonized for financial failure. And many of them are dealing with terrible financial situations themselves. So it's a great point, Anna, but that's why I would put the extra twist on it that I mentioned there briefly. But I would really emphasize it, whether you're a Democrat running in the general election or Republican in the primary, he's a spoiled little baby. His daddy gave him $413 million. He's not like you where, hey, you're having a tough time because your wages aren't high enough. And I understand you got took the credit card debt, et cetera. No, he blew $400 million twice, once from his dad and once from Jeff Zucker and NBC for the apprentice.

And that's because he's spoiled. He's a spoiled and titled baby after all this time. But Anna's right. In a Republican primary, you have to be much more careful about it because they love him. So any criticism of him other than he might lose is that dangerous ground to be on. So this is definitely dissand us going in the right direction here. So let's talk a little bit about what DeSantis is up to in terms of loosening election laws in the state of Florida. This was a report by The Guardian that really caught my attention because this is the kind of authoritarian action.

that Republicans like to fear monger about when it allegedly happens on the left, but get a load of what he's up to. So according to the Guardian, DeSantis is poised to sign a bill that would exempt him from Florida's resigned to run law so that he won't have to give up his office in order to run for president. Under existing state law, if he were to run, DeSantis would have to have had to submit a resignation letter before Florida's qualifying deadline this year and step down by inauguration day in 2025. Now the fact that he is going to sign that legislation, he absolutely

will because he doesn't want to give up power while he runs for president. It's really a major disservice to the people of Florida because running for president is no small thing. And to be sure, he's been focusing all of his leadership so far in this term on himself, right? Anything that might be politically expedient, that is what he focuses on. And that, again, is a disservice to the people of Florida. Florida's dealing with issues right now. Anything from teacher shortages, economic issues among the constituents there. You know, we hear glowing headlines about Florida, but there are still issues that the

constituents are dealing with that Ron DeSantis has completely ignored, neglected. Same with the super majority of Republicans in the state legislature. they've really been working on his behalf by passing all of these politically motivated pieces of legislation in order to help his chances of winning the Republican primary. Yeah, look, I don't think politicians do much to begin with. So let's get rid of them then. Yeah, if only we, of course, the real answer is get politicians that actually serve you and work hard for you, but good luck with that and we're working on it.

But these guys ain't it. But even so, look, Florida especially oftentimes has natural disasters. And the other day, even Marco Rubio seemed to be criticizing DeSantis for being out of the state when they had a disaster in Florida. Right, they had a gas shortage as a result. People were lining up at the pumps and they couldn't find any gas stations that had any gas left. That was an example. So that's half of it that he's going to be an absentee governor. He already is and it's going to get way, way worse running for president.

It ain't no joke, right? And of course he's a politician and I don't care about the people of Florida. He just wants to win the presidency. And by the way, the other reason they're passing this law is he thinks he might lose, which is true. And he just wants to go back to being governor of Florida. That's exactly right, right. That's exactly right.

And so he doesn't want to lose his day job. Not the sign of a strong candidate, by the way. Well, that's true. But to me, the main thing here is the Republicans in Florida being like, oh, yeah, our laws, who cares? Okay, that's going to apply to everyone else. for someone who is running for president or vice president. Gee, I wonder who that would be and why we're passing this law now.

I mean, their hypocrisy, as always, knows no balance. So the bill also includes some sweeping new voting restrictions in the state, which would make it harder for nonprofits to do voter registration drives. Gee, I wonder why. Some more details though, because there's a corruption angle to all of this, meaning he is looking to do away with some of the transparency laws laws and make some of his political activity opaque. For instance, DeSantis also signed a bill last week that will shield records related

to his travel from public view. The new law exempts all of DeSantis' past and future travel from disclosure under Florida's public records law, which was one of the most transparent in the United States. It also exempts the state from having to disclose the names of people who meet with the governor at his office or mansion or travel with him, and that's according to Barbara Peterson, the executive director of the Florida Center for Government Accountability. She's actually worked on transparency laws for more than three decades in the state of Florida. And when she was interviewed about this, she said, it's unfreaking believable.

It will be virtually impossible to hold this governor accountable without access to those kinds of records. So not only will the corruption take place, as always, the corruption is baked into our political system. It's completely legalized at this point. But if you want to at least be privy to the corruption that's motivating some of the decisions that Ron DeSantis makes, you won't be able to do that. Yeah. So she sounds like a good person. The only issue that I take with her is that it's unfrikan believable. It's the most believable thing in the world. The Republican majority in Florida's now basically put up a flag of corruption and saying we will do anything and everything to get DeSantis elected and make sure that

he's not actually serving as governor of Florida. We don't care about any of our previous laws, any of our previous principles, we're going to violate them all. That sounds exactly like the corrupt politicians that we have today. I believe it completely. By the way, the main point of that law to hide his travel and his meetings, et cetera, is to protect the donor meetings that he's having because he's going to meet with tons and tons of donors who are all going to legally bribe him.

And so he doesn't want a record of all the people that came to bribe him. And that's why he's having them pass this law. And of course, Florida Republicans are like, oh my God, we also get bribed. And we don't want that record either. So yeah, sure, of course. Let's keep all of our bribe secret. And so that's the main reason why they're doing. By the way, limiting the voter registration drives for the billionth time in or

Republicans don't want more people voting because they know for a fact. Trump has said it publicly that if everybody votes, there's no way a Republican could possibly win. It's insane. They know that they're the minority party. That's why they have a bag of tricks to make sure that they can trick you, limit you from voting and do everything they can so that that loudmouth minority can rule us all. When we come back from the break, we'll do yet another story out of the state of Florida.

This time having to do with an educator, a fifth grade teacher who is being investigated for showing her students a PG film. We'll be right back. a teacher who's being investigated. The minor representations that have nothing to do with the movie are such a big deal that now admin is in their room, pulling their teacher out, calling the students one by one down to the office to interrogate them in the middle of my lessons. And now there is an investigator from the Florida Department of Education coming to pull my students out of class again to investigate them individually.

A Florida teacher is currently facing a state. investigation after showing the Disney movie Strange World to her fifth grade students. The movie, by the way, is pretty innocent, it's rated PG. Let's hear more from what she has to say. And by the way, they don't even have to have a signed parent permission slip for that. The LGBTQ aspect of the movie, they're harmless. It's just a talked about crush. And it's only a couple lines in total scene time of just over two minutes.

The parents in the movie kiss a lot. And that wasn't even brought up, and that's the issue. Look, the hetero-smooching, not a problem for a conservative school board member who has sparked this investigation. The real issue, as was noted in the video you just watched, had to do with the fact that the main character is not heterosexual and is attracted to someone of the same sex. But the movie isn't about that and barely even touches on that. In fact, what is the movie about? Well, Strange World, an animated sci-fi movie was released by Disney in the late fall of 2022. The movie depicts a group of explorers who go on an adventure to find an exotic plant that serves as their society's source of energy.

And conservatives don't like the movie apparently. And look, I don't want to generalize. It's one conservative school board member who was elected into the school board last fall. and she tries to get books banned. This is like the number one thing she seems to be pretty passionate about. Her daughter was in the classroom as this film was shown. And the main character of the film, Ethan Clayd is gay, played by Jabuki Young White. Clayd's storyline includes having a crush on another male character named Diazo.

Critics blasted the movie as indoctrination and Fox News said it was the latest in a year of woke disasters for Disney and the film, to be fair to the right wing zealots in the country has been restricted in other countries. So you know, they've got some company here. And that includes the Middle East, China, Indonesia, Turkey, Nigeria, Uganda, and other countries because of the very small LGBTQ storyline there. And Jank, you said you've seen the film. I hope you didn't show it to your kids. I'm sure they were scandalized by it if you did. Well, we did. We watch it together. And they remained entirely unscandalized, okay?

They barely noted that situation. I don't think they noted it at all, actually. And so why? Because to them, it's not some weird or scandalous and outrageous thing for someone to be gay. It's a so what. And that's exactly what conservatives are worried about. They don't want it to be a so what, they want it to be a mark of shame to be gay. And they're really mad.

that it's not shameful anymore. And they want to go back to the battle days where it is. And I like this, you know, this last thing that Anna pointed out of like, hey, that's okay, though. It is banned in other countries, like, as the Republicans would say, Chinese Communist Party. Party has banned it. And so are you proud? Are you proud that you're with a Chinese Communist Party? A number of Muslim countries have banned it.

Uganda has banned it. So is that great company? Is that the company that right wing is one? They're like, yes, we're with the fundamentalist Muslims. Well, say it loud, say it proud, okay? Yeah. And guys, to me, the most important part of the story is, we called it colloquially to don't say gay bill.

And Republicans freaked out. They're like, that's not what it says, man. This is so for not sexualizing the kids, et cetera. But in that movie, I watched it. There was no sexualizing of the gay character at all. There was some of the straight characters, but not of the gay character. I know, but the straight character stuff, totally fine. Yeah, which by the way, I also think is totally fine.

It's not overly sexualizing. It's like kissing. It's a PG movie. Yeah. It's a PG movie. But I'm talking about the straight characters. The gay characters didn't do anything. They didn't kiss.

They didn't do anything, okay? So when they say, oh, yeah, we're bringing you up on this. They're basically admitting, yes, we don't want you to ever. mention that there are gay people in the world? Now, after being duped by Rebecca Jones, I wanted to make sure that there was confirmation that this teacher is in fact being investigated, and she is in fact being investigated. Her name is Jenna Barbie, and the Hernando County School District confirmed a fifth grade teacher, and that's Jenna Barbie is being investigated for showing strange world, and that a parent

complained to the principal about the movie not being appropriate for students. The complaint was sent to the Hernando County teacher, oh, I'm sorry, the complaint sent to the Hernando County teacher states, the Department of Education's Office of Professional Practices Services has determined an investigation is warranted into allegations that you engaged in inappropriate conduct. Now, the letter was signed by Randy Kosak, who is the chief of professional practices under the words, please govern yourselves accordingly. And the situation needlessly escalated due to an overzealous school board member who was elected just last fall.

Her name is Shannon Rodriguez. And you're about to hear Jenna Barbie talk about her in the next clip. I was told by every teacher and mentor at our school that our method for approval by administration of showing movies was to have a signed parent permission slit for PG movies. I had that from the beginning of the year. The whole fifth grade team had signed permission for PG movies with no objections to specific content. I actually had one student who did have objection to specific content, not showing the Buzz Lightyear movie,

but she wasn't in my classroom anymore. So it wasn't a big deal. The reason I was turned in is because one of the split students was a school board member's daughter. That school board member is currently on a rampage to get rid of every form of representation out of our schools. She even spent days this past week going to all the high schools to get rid of anything that had to do with representation whatsoever. She even had admin escort her to a teacher's classroom that had a sticker of a black hand and a white hand holding hands.

And the white hand had a different color fingernail for every finger. So as I mentioned earlier, the school board member who was elected last fall is Shannon Rodriguez. She was endorsed by the conservative group known as Moms for Liberty. And in her short tenure, she has argued there is smut and pornography on school's library shelves and has asked for books to be removed. And in fact, at one point, the teacher, Miss Barbie, ended up having a meeting with her in order to discuss this complaint over this movie. And here's how that conversation went.

We had a meeting and I understood her perspective that, okay, she really doesn't want this shown at her house. I never saw that perspective before. So I didn't think it was a big deal. But seeing how upset she was, I told her, I understand my lesson. That's that. But come to find out, she had already reported me and there was nothing she can do about it. And she also claimed that even though there were consent forms in the beginning of the school year, since the teacher did not send a specific consent form having to do with this specific film, well, then she can't say that she received approval from the parents to show this film in class. She also said this in an interview with the Tallahassee Democrat, quote,

it's not a teacher's job to impose their beliefs upon a child, religious, sexual orientation, gender identity, any of the above. But allowing movies such as this assist teachers in opening the door for conversations that have no place in our classrooms. But the teacher says this wasn't about teaching the students about gay relationships. In fact, the subject matter in the film actually addresses some of the subject matter we've been discussing in class, and she gets into the details of that in this clip. Let's watch. I chose this movie because it relates to our curriculum. Our unit at the time was earth science and ecosystems and how they interact, plants, humans, animals. So this movie's

perfect. My thought process was what a better way to showcase all these standards, along with huge lessons of overcoming differences, spreading kindness, communication, and chasing your dreams, a lot of which are in our social, emotional Florida best standards as well. Is a character in the movie, LGBTQ? Absolutely. Is that why I showed it? No, I have a lot of fifth grade students who have come to me this year long before showing this movie talking about how they're part of that community as well. You know, at a time when Florida, as with many other states, is facing a pretty severe teacher shortage, I think it's great that the, you know, officials there are spending their time micromanaging the educators and putting them under

investigation for showing their students PG films that have to do with the subject matter that they're teaching in class. Really great use of resources there guys. So if you notice, a conservative critic there is like, oh, it brings up sexual orientation. But every movie that has straight couples in it arguably brings up sexual orientation because they're just straight. So they're admitting it every time accidentally. Like, straight people are okay, anyone who's LGBTQ in any way, shape, or form is not okay. We don't want you to even, we don't want our kids to even know that they exist. The very fact that a teacher could expose our kids to the idea that there are gay people in this world to us is unacceptable.

Don't tell me you're not about hate. Don't tell me that because you're telling me with your actions that you're definitely about hate. You don't, you don't want gay people in the society, and you don't want our kids to even know that they exist. And God help those kids if one of them is LGBTQ. And by the way, statistically, obviously tons of them are. And they're saying, no, you must teach them hatred. Only thing that is acceptable is straight people. Anybody who's LGBTQ, we can't even, they're so bad, so terrible, we can't even have anyone talk about it in the classroom.

Look, that's who you are. Just live up to it, okay? I just own up to it. So look, the movie, again, I coincidentally watched it a couple of months ago with my family. It's totally about ecosystems. She's totally right. I mean, it is picture perfect for that category, right? I have to confess, I watched it and I said to the family afterwards, that is a super lib movie, right?

That's going to trigger conservatives. I know, I know conservatives. Wanting it has a gay character. They're already super triggered, right? Secondly, it's like about climate change, people are nice to each other, they follow their own dreams instead of what the community demands. I was like, oh, the conservatives are going to hate this movie, right? And they do. But guys, I watch conservative movies all the time.

So what? I do. I watch like every Viking show on Netflix, okay? Is that conservative? Yeah, because they circle the wagons and kill everyone who isn't in their tribe. It's like the most conservative thing you could do. Inside their tribe, they're good to one another. For every other tribe, we've got a lot of axes coming in your direction.

Okay, and I'm not like, I'm triggered. It's just entertainment, okay? But at the end of the day here, yeah, no, the right wing has exposed themselves for who they are. By the way, if you're in the right wing and you don't believe that, well, then vote based on it. And say to your own leaders, hey, I want the tax cuts. I want this, I want that, but could you not hate gay people? I'm not going to vote for you if you do. That would be one way to address this.

Well, we come back from the break. Pretty big story in the Los Angeles Times in regard to frontline workers who are doing outreach for the homeless. But they're paid so little that they can't afford housing themselves. We'll give you the numbers and we'll tell you all about the issue when we come back. All right on TYT, Jank, Anna, and Jim with you guys. Jim Strump just became a member. Scotty B gifted five Young Turks memberships, which we appreciate. And Jason Zeeha, who was a YouTube member, made a really interesting point.

Why didn't Trump just have that tornado nuked? Could have solved the problem right there. He did think about, he did consider that option in his first term. Let's hope there isn't a second one. All right, Anna, what's next? All right. Frontline homeless outreach workers in Los Angeles are not making enough money in their salaries in order to afford housing themselves. And that's according to a new report done by the nonpartisan Rand Corporation.

Let's get into the details and then talk about just how much these organizations are funded and how much money rises to the top but doesn't make it to the actual people doing the work. Now, researchers estimate that the workers need to make $64,000 annually just to want to afford a one-bedroom apartment or $82,000 for a two-bedroom. Instead, they make about $40,000 to $60,000, spending a large portion of their income on rent with very little money left for other necessities. Now, we live in Los Angeles. You definitely need to make at least the amount that's specified by this RAND study. And what's leading to this is, what this is leading to, I should say, is burnout and high turnover among these organizations,

either government agencies or nonprofits dealing with the homeless crisis in Los Angeles. Low pay places financial, emotional, and health burdens on workers already facing hazardous and stressful conditions. It's interesting that it's referred to as hazardous when it's convenient because it is hazardous. You're dealing with people who have severe mental health issues in some cases and might be going through an episode. You're dealing with people who might be on some pretty gnarly drugs that compromise their ability to control their impulses. And so this is a very difficult and important job. I really want to be clear about that. They eventually leave for other careers, creating staffing shortages that ultimately affect the quality of care given to people experiencing homelessness.

And Rand looked into these nonprofits, but of the organizations that is funded by the county and city of Los Angeles is a government agency known as the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, or Lodian. And I want to get into the details about how they spend their funding in just a moment. I think it's really important to dissect the way they deal with the financial situation within that organization. Before we do though, Cenk, any thoughts? Yeah. Well, you know you might not be doing it right. If you're home, the workers that you have that are supposed to address homelessness, don't get paid enough to the point where they might become homeless themselves. That would be deeply counterproductive. And it's Some of them have to live all the way out, like a couple of hours from L.A.

Some of them now are struggling with having their own apartment for sure. As they explain in a number of instances, there's a little bit of a hero in this story at some point. But guys, overall, the big picture here is tons of cities, including L.A., spend a gargantuan amount of money on trying to address homelessness. I'll tell you how much. Yeah. And homelessness only goes up. So we are misdirecting the money. The money is not being spent, right?

That is for sure. 1,000% and if you care about any of it, so maybe some of you only care about the money, maybe some of you care about the homeless. I hope you care about both, right? Because it's our money and those are folks we need to help. For all of you, you have to care, wait, are we doing this right, right? Is this actually working? And right now, it doesn't appear that way at all.

So there are about 200, 200 different organizations dealing, with the homeless crisis in Los Angeles alone, and they employ 8,000 people, okay? And the county of Los Angeles spends $3 billion a year on homelessness, 3 billion. So any allegation that we're not allocating the necessary resources is ridiculous. If you look at their books, if you look into the salaries and how they're broken down, you'll see where the money's going. You'll see where the money's going. So let's get into some details here.

Jake mentioned that a hero makes an appearance in this story, and you're right about that. It's just that the hero gets pushed out of Lhasa. Let's talk about who she was. A year ago, Heidi Martson, the chief executive of Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, resigned after giving raises to her lowest paid staffers without approval from the commission that oversees the agency. In her resignation letter, she said that Lhasa employees were making as little as $33,000 leading to high turnover. In March of 2021, she increased the annual salaries of $196 employees to $50,000 while freezing the compensation of the 10 highest paid staffers. Now, I'm sure the highest paid staffers were not happy about that.

And when we talk about the highest paid staffers, I mean, we're talking about a government funding. agency that's supposed to be dealing with a very serious crisis in which as many as 60,000 people are living and in some cases dying on the streets of Los Angeles. Well, how much money are we talking about here at the upper echelons of Lhasa? Well, Valicia Adams-Kellum, she's the new head of Lhasa and she makes $430,000 a year. $430,000 a year. And by the way, I looked at their books to see just how many of their employers. are making at a minimum a six-figure salary.

And the latest data that we have is for 2020, and there were 33 employees making at least six figures. I want to know why the frontline workers who are out on the streets trying to do the work are making as little as $33,000, whereas the head of this organization is making almost half a million dollars. Yeah, unfortunately, they've adopted the for-profit model, where the top gets all the money and the regular workers. and the regular workers, unfortunately, don't get very much at all.

But in a nonprofit situation, in a governmental situation, that is even more unjustified. So we can get into the economics of why it's unjustified, but it's kind of obvious, so we don't have to. I love that she raised their salaries without asking the commission. The commission afterwards was livid, and they said, well, we probably would have raised it anyway. We just said that she didn't ask us. My ass, you would have. No way. That's the only way that those people would have gotten a raise. If she'd asked permission, they would have stonewalled her for sure. So that's why it was bold, courageous of the correct thing to do if you ask me. Yeah, the commission wouldn't have done that because they don't actually value what the objective is supposed to be. They don't. They just don't. Yeah. Because take a look at how much their funding has increased while simultaneously homelessness has exploded. Okay? No, no, no, no, I want to give the numbers and then you can jump in. Yeah.

So in the 2014 to 2015 fiscal year, Lhasa received funding of $63 million. That's a lot of money. But by 2022, funding had increased nearly 13-fold to about $808 million. In the same period, the number of people experiencing homelessness in L.A. County increased by 56%. It's just a monumental failure. And that data is from a lengthy report that McKinsey did. And maybe you don't trust McKinsey. I actually thought they did a pretty good job with this report, but I wanted to confirm that $808 million figure.

So I went to Lhasa's website, and here's what their website says. Let's go to Graphic 8. Lhasa coordinates and manages over $800 million annually in federal, state, county, and city funds of programs that provide shelter, housing, and services to people experiencing homelessness. Except they don't hit their goals, and I'll tell you what I mean by that in just a moment. They don't even come close to hitting their goals, but Jake, jumping. Guys, if the funding goes from about 60 million to 800 million and homelessness doesn't go down, but it goes up by a giant number, 56%. That's such a monumental failure. You have to almost drip the whole thing up and start over again.

And by the way, that would probably do us a world of good. But if you have to have an excellent manager, I'm not even sure they have to be excellent. Maybe they're just good would be enough because, Jesus, $3 billion. I cannot imagine a world in which I couldn't solve the homelessness problem in L.A. with $3 billion a year. That's that's insanity, insanity. You could, can you build enough homes with $3 billion? Yes, there's a thousand things you could do with $3 billion a year, except it's mainly going to apparently salaries of the top end of these folks. And by the way, when I ran for office in the L.A. area, I would often hear people telling me that, hey,

you know what, for a lot of the establishment Democrats, the best scam they have is going to run one of these homelessness organizations. Thousand percent. That's why there's 200 of them. And I said, receiving $3 billion a year to do what? What have they done? Lhasa was caught throwing away perfectly good food that was meant for the homeless. They just threw it away. That was part of the local news investigation. They also are supposed to count the number of people living on the streets every year. Last year, they claimed that there were no homeless people in Venice. I mean, if you've ever been to LA, that's the most comical, ridiculous thing you could possibly hear.

Okay, look, one more thing about the raising the employee's salaries, 33,000 in L.A.'s, 100% unlivable. So let me give you a sense of context. When I moved here a little bit over 20 years ago, I was on a one bedroom apartment. It was so crappy that I moved eventually because my car got stolen. There was blood in the hallways, et cetera. and that used to be $1,000 for a one-bedroom apartment. Now that's about $3,000 or $3,500. Well, let's say the take the lower number, $3,000.

That's $36,000 right there just for your rent for an apartment where you might bleed out. Okay, so how the hell are they supposed to live on $33,000 a year? And they're the ones that are actually going and dealing with homeless folks. A lot of times when I volunteered in organizations and et cetera, so you'll meet some of the best people in the world there that run it on top. tough times and they're looking out for one another. And sometimes you'll meet folks who are in deep trouble and it's a dangerous situation, right? So for the folks dealing with them and trying to get them help, to have them have

non-livable salaries while the guys at the top are taking all the money, totally unacceptable. Now the Department of Housing and Urban Development has done an audit of Lhasa because they're like, you guys are taking in a lot of money, what's going on here? Well, here's what they found, that the authority, meaning Lhasa, did not fully meet the goals and objectives of the program, and did not always follow program requirements, specifically it did not use $3.5 million in continuum of care grant awards and let the funds expire. They just let the funds expire. Did not support homeless management information system and planning grant costs,

did not submit timely annual performance reports. And there might be a good reason for why they didn't do that. Let's fast forward to Graphic 12 here. There was an investigation done back in 2019 into the performance of Lhasa specifically. Outreach workers were supposed to place into permanent housing 10%, not a lofty goal, to be honest with you, 10% of the homeless people they assessed. But in the fiscal year that ended in June, they placed only 4%, the audit reported. The goal was 20% for placing people in shelters, but they achieved only 14%.

The discrepancies were greater for referrals to treatment, 6% for substance abuse and 4% for mental health, both had goals of 25%. And what I love about this story, and what I'm about to say doesn't just have to do with loss. It has to do with all of these nonprofits in general, is that their big complaint is we're not getting enough money. Like if you want us to pay these workers more, we need more money. So let's go to Graphic 10. Despite the 2017 approval of Measure H, local sales tax hikes to fund homelessness programs, nonprofit leaders told the researchers that they don't receive enough government funding to raise wages. They receive $3 billion a year.

$3 billion a year. And the only thing that's happened is homelessness has gotten worse. So I would prefer the government to, you know, use that money to. to construct housing. Declare this an emergency. We are currently in a state of emergency to basically override and bypass any of these ridiculous nimbly laws

that prevent the construction of new housing and cut the fat out. Because what I'm seeing here is a bunch of mismanagement, misuse of taxpayer money and a lot of pain and suffering on the ground as a result of that. So just build the housing and cut the fat. They won't do it. So we're gonna keep shelling out.

billions of dollars every year for one county and we're gonna see no results. Yeah I mean look there's so many potential solutions but NIMBY's a big problem you need a strong person to get past that problem I you know whenever they proposed low income housing in my neighborhood they send around petitions oh you don't want that in our neighborhood I'm like no I do and they're like oh it'll reduce our property values no it won't first of all that's not necessarily true second of all we've got to be decent to one another so I say no I I don't want to any part of your petition.

But unfortunately, those things, you know, wind up affecting policy so much. That's why we're a little heartened that Karen Bass has done a pretty good job so far. And she has. And so she's got to push past that stuff. And she's doing that. But I want to say one more thing about misspending the money. Guys, it's such a double bogey because when you misspend the money, what happens is all the citizens in whichever jurisdiction you're in go, well, we gave you the three.

billion and it got worse. So that's it. We're not going to give you any more money. The next time a ballot measures proposed, it's not going to pass, right? They're like, because we gave and gave and gave and gave, and it got worse and worse and worse. So then all of a sudden, you were actually going to have restricted money. And it's going to be even harder to address the problem.

That's why you've got to get in there and actually fix the inefficiencies and how terribly they're spending the money. And one more thing, guys, do not lose hope. With effective management, these things are solving. Houston did a great job in addressing homelessness. And so there are right ways to spend money, there are correct strategies, and we should take the Houston model and do it all over the country instead of this giant, labyrinth, wasteful bureaucracy that we have in cities like L.A.

That does it for the first hour. When we come back from the break, there's a Silicon Valley scandal that you definitely want to know about. And later in the hour, we might lighten things up with a comparison to Succession. What was the story that you wanted to compare to Succession again? Yeah, no, it's Roger Ayles' wife comes out and attacks the Murdoch family. That's right. I'm going to show you who in Succession represents the different members of the Murdoch family. I think you'll love that.

He's going to present it. It's going to be great. It's going to be beautiful. Fun for everyone. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com at apple.com slash t-y-t.

I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.